Piano Lab

After a mere 6 days from start to finish, I am thrilled that my new DonorsChoose project has already been funded! I am working on raising money this year to buy 10-12 full size keyboards for my classroom. Then for the older students next year (3rd and 4th graders) we can have a piano lab! The students are already getting excited and I am too! With the funding of this 1st DonorsChoose project, we now have a great start to the piano lab. We have 2 keyboards now, with stands and headphones.
DonorsChoose.org!
It is awesome!

Entertaining Exam

Yesterday I took my Music Content Knowledge certification exam. Unfortunately, I have to wait 4 weeks to find out my results. It was definitely the most unique exam I've ever taken. Since I started this blog, I've been studying (at least once a week) for this test. As my mother likes to say "Do your best and let God take care of the rest" I feel like I did that, and if I don't pass I'll review more and try try again!
The exam was unique in that there were 30 listening questions in which I had to identify composers, chords, world region, genre, performers etc. It was kind of like having your Itunes on shuffle and then answering questions about the music. :-)
In other news, my 2nd year of teaching music in French immersion is in full swing. I didn't get to go to my Level I Orff summer training course because it was canceled due to low enrollment. Dommage. Too bad. I'm going to attend all of the workshops put on by the AOSA music teachers professional organization here in St. Louis though. They are great! I always feel so encouraged and rejuvenated after them. Plus I walk away with at least 10+ interactive fun lessons! I just have to translate them into French and I have so many native speakers around at school to help me with that. :-)
Have a great week and enjoy the autumn weather!

Flying Solo

I am very blessed to have a teacher assistant, Monsieur Abdou. Most elementary music teachers do not have assistants and our school's teacher to student ratio is not the norm in public schools. Usually he helps me out for 5 of my 8 classes. On Thursday, Abdou's host family took him on an all day cycling trip. He really deserved the day off but needless to say, being alone with 20+ children ages 5-9 holding tambourines and maracas is tough. I am still learning a lot about elementary classroom management. That is a long way to say, I spend a lot of time trying to keep the children in control and on task. Having another adult in the classroom to manage the hyper children (or the ones having melt downs) is priceless.
By the grace of God, it was a successful instruction day. I wanted to let the students play percussion instruments to a song they knew really well. So I passed out maracas and tambourines for "Les cro-cro" It is an upbeat 2/4 song about crocodiles. I let them dance (on the red lines without jumping on the flip forms of course) and they did a great job of playing their instruments and staying on the beat. I could tell they were all trying hard and having fun too! This is one of the reasons why I do what I do.

Feather Theme

Last Saturday morning, I attended a workshop put on by the St. Louis chapter of AOSA (Orff-Schulwerk Association) All the teachers there were very nice and I learned so much about music education. The Orff-Schulwerk approach to music education is very focused on movement and having the children actively engaged in the music.
I was chompin' at the bit to teach the new lessons I learned at the workshop. I decided to teach a lesson on dynamics in music using  "The Feather Theme" song from Forrest Gump. I found a fabric outlet store and purchased 5 yards of different colors of chiffon and cut them into small scarves. The key concepts of the lesson were Listening and Movement. I told the students to imagine that the scarves were feathers floating in the wind. The music from the song is divided into three sections. We started out kneeling on the floor in a circle making the scarves float along the ground. Section 2 the students stood up and began to walk slowly around the room floating the scarves at the medium level (about waist high) The third section the students billowed the scarves up above their heads when the music crescendoed. All the classes loved it. I could tell they were listening carefully for the musical cues to switch levels. It looked really cool too, all the different colors and the children spinning around to the music with huge smiles on their faces. This is one of the reasons why I do what I do.

The Competition Key

In a spontaneous moment of inspiration I decided to have a competition for my classes. There is a classroom management practice from Uncommon Schools (a charter school group) called 100%. It boils down to this: 100% of the time 100% of the students are on task and engaged in the lesson. I decided to try to implement the 100% idea with my "les pieds contre le gris" flip form procedure. Periodically in each class I did a flip form check, if 100% of the students had their feet against the gray part of the flip forms, sitting up straight and quiet, the class earned a star on the board. For a 50 minute class period some of the classes only earned 3-4 stars. But (drumroll please...) on Thursday my most challenging class of all earned 5 stars and on Friday another challenging class earned 6 stars! I have found one of the keys to good behavior for some of my classes-competition! It is not very surprising considering our American culture is highly competitive. I told both winning classes that next week I will give them a surprise in music class. They were so thrilled that they won! I can't wait to give them their surprises too. I have to fork out a bit of cash (~$25) but it is worth every penny to have two of my most challenging classes competing to be good.
The kindergarten classes are learning about the planetary system this quarter so I played for them the BBC Philharmonica orchestra youtube videos of Gustav Holst's The Planets. Each class loved hearing the differences in each movement and several of the boys piped up to say that Mars sounded like Star Wars! They all asked to hear and see more of the music next week. This is one of the reasons why I do what I do.
Holst: Mars http://youtu.be/AGGlL1wexQk

On partage (We share)

When I started my position as music teacher, I was thrilled to find that the former music teacher had not spent any of the music budget yet. I asked my mentor what I should buy. She suggested rhythm instruments such as tambourines, finger cymbals, maracas and wooden rhythm sticks. So I promptly spent about $400 on instruments! The students really enjoy playing them and I know it has made music class more meaningful. However I tried to stretch the budget, we still ended up short on a few instruments. For example I only was able to order 10 sets of finger cymbals and 10 pairs of large maracas. It has been a bit challenging to explain to the younger students that they have to take turns and share some of the instruments. I finally figured out a system of rotating the instruments around the room clockwise so everyone gets a turn. It takes longer but prevents (some) of the drama.
So in the spirit of sharing, I'd like to share some French music with my readers! Here's how the giveaway will work: you have to "follow" the blog and comment on this post telling me your favorite genre of music. Then I will send you a French CD of that genre. I have pretty much every genre from childrens songs (naturally) to rap, pop and classical. Let the sharing begin! On partage!

My first Donors Choose Project

Here is the link for my first Donors Choose project! We really need a new stereo and this one is not too expensive and will work splendidly for the classes. It was not that hard (about an hour of my time) to put it together and there have already been two donations. Genial! (Awesome!)

http://www.donorschoose.org/donors/proposal.html?id=550442